Category Archives: Movies

It has been a gorgeous weekend around these parts. Temperatures today reached nearly seventy degrees and it was sunny just about all morning and afternoon. As much as I love this kind of weather, it is a little sad when I realize that it will soon be gone again. Winter warmups later in the season don’t frustrate me quite as much since there seems to be so much less time until long-term relief from the frigid air is in sight! Oh well, I will take what I can get!

NOT to sound like a broken record, but I want my gym floor back. 😦

Granted, it’s great that so many people are discovering this gym and enjoying it’s facilities, but it’s just not big enough for the traffic! Yesterday morning, I knew there would be trouble when I couldn’t find a parking spot. When I finally did, I walked in to the loudest scene imaginable. It was lunacy. There were group exercise classes happening on the main floor! The mats were occupied by one class, half of the weight floor was accounted for by another! All of the treadmills were taken and there were no bikes remaining! All the while, there were two different Les Mills classes running (which are intense and fantastic, but louder than anything you’ve ever heard!). I was losing my mind.

Eventually, I settled in on an elliptical machine and worked very hard to distract myself from the mayhem that surrounded me. Once again, I forgot my earbuds so I was left to my own devices as far as entertainment was concerned. I picked up a Shape magazine and pored through those pages.

I (stupidly) hunted around after the cardio for a place to complete a circuit workout, but since all of the previously mentioned places were still occupied, I grabbed my coat and home I went.

The rest of the day yesterday was spent with my mom and it was a lot of fun! After some random shopping errands, we went out to one of my very favorite restaurants for dinner! (SHOCK OF THE CENTURY: I HAVE NO PICTURES OF MY MEAL. What is this madness?! Clearly, I must have not had my wits about me.) I ate a very non-diet-friendly meal consisting of one of my favorite appetizers of all time, mozzarella fritta, along with a penne vodka dish for the main event. The mozzarella is essentially breaded fresh mozzarella that’s served with the most delicious pesto and marinara sauces in all of the land. I could eat 100 pounds of it, but then this blog would take a very different turn.

We also rented a Redbox movie from the grocery store last night: Beasts of the Southern Wild.

I originally heard about this movie when it was featured on a news show that my mom watches a week or two ago. It didn’t sound like anything I had ever seen before and I immediately wanted to rent it.

Incidentally, the film is up for several Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Best Actress in a Leading Role. The actress is Quvenzhané Wallis who was just five years old at the time of filming. She is the youngest actress to ever be nominated!

The trailer for this movie is spectacular. The music, the voiceover, the scenes that are shown (like the one in the poster above).

A Brief Synopsis: This movie is about a little girl named Hush Puppy and her father who are living in a ramshackle bayou community that will soon be entirely underwater due to the floods. As the father’s health declines rapidly, he works to teach his little girl how to survive and fend for herself. He teaches her to be strong, independent and fearless. At times, his grating manner gets to be a bit much to handle, but the intention of the film is clear– it is the father’s love for his daughter that drives his behavior. He wants her to overcome the looming hardships so he teaches her in the only way that he knows how.

I really wanted to love this movie, but I couldn’t really get into it. There were some moments that were absolutely stunning and some that were heartbreaking. Some lines from the film will stick in my head for a zillion years. The filming was gorgeous and the ideas were fantastic, but by the end of the film, I felt like there wasn’t too much that was actually accomplished. While events were happening and there was certainly some drama, it was actually rather unremarkable. What I will say for the film is that it did serve as a very powerful character study. It left me thinking about the fact that there are people who live the way these characters live. There are people who write down their stories because they are living under the radar and as Hush Puppy said, it’s the only way the scientists will know who they were. Sure, that sounds like a stupid revelation, but how often do you think about people sailing through the bayous in half of an old pickup truck that they’ve converted into a boat and spend their time searching desperately for a way to survive coming disasters? Not too often, I’ll bet. It’s a big, big world out there.

Anyway, I can’t even figure out whether or not I would recommend this movie to you. Perhaps it’s one of those films that you “get” the second time around. It was definitely thoguht-provoking and moving, but as far as a “Best Picture,” I’m just not sure.

If any of you have seen this movie, I’d love to hear what you thought!